


If a night dark enough to hide me

by rightfullymine



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pre-Series 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 14:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13250037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightfullymine/pseuds/rightfullymine
Summary: Eva and Jonas on a day in early spring, before the summer they got together.





	If a night dark enough to hide me

In the end, Eva goes to the skate park because she cannot help it.

It’s just after 2 p.m. on a weekday without school at the end of March. The weather is as harsh as ever, and she pays extra attention on her way there not to slip on the icy sidewalks.

She tells herself that there is no guarantee Jonas will be there, and that she’s not as bad as her friends would say if they knew her heart. She is.

She gets there much sooner than she has planned so she doesn’t have time to think again, change her mind, run back home.

Heart hammering wildly in her chest, she descends the steps that lead to the skate area and takes off her gloves just to dig her nails into the palms of her hands, to stop them from shaking like leaves in the wind.

The need to see him has built steadily in her since school closed for the Easter holidays and they don’t see each other every day. Ingrid and him are once again on a rough patch so Eva’s chances to see him socially are reduced to zero. And she has been going crazy.

She sits down on the concrete and doesn’t have time to register the freezing cold seeping into her jeans, despite it being spring already, because she spots him not far away from where she is sitting, and he sees her too.

He’s wearing a beanie and a grey windcheater, faded jeans and a pair of Vans. She tries not to appreciate how confidently he’s standing with his skateboard balanced on his leg or how built his chest looks even under several layers of clothing, but she knows it’s a fool’s errand and she accepts the inevitable wave of warmth that floods her stomach only half begrudgingly.

He is looking at her with an expression that’s stuck between surprise and anticipation. It’s like he can’t believe she’s actually here but was waiting all along for her to show up. The thought nearly makes her choke.

Then he smiles and the happiness makes his eyes bright like coals in a hearth. Suddenly, all of it is worth it, all her deep-bone shame and her contorted lies and downcast glances, even the freezing cold that she’s bracing to be here, it’s all worth it for that smile, for the look in Jonas’ eyes that tells her she’s not so crazy, after all.

It only lasts a second, though.

Then his friends shove him around and he diverts his gaze. They gather their boards and start skating. She realizes with a start that it didn’t even cross her mind that Isak might be here, hanging around with Jonas, and that if he had been, this would have be a disaster, her carefully constructed façade crumbling like cereal in a bowl of scolding milk. Her stomach drops, and she feels stupid and foolish and a stupid fool.

This love she feels burning in her chest is drowning her, she knows, the water pressing her heart down and making her feel untethered, unmoored, clouding her mind with jumbled thoughts, making her not think straight. She doesn’t know how this is going to end but she feels like a train that knows it will run out of rail racks eventually.

Yet, she is past wishing she would stop feeling the way she feels. She knows that is useless, knows she can’t help it. Maybe if she hadn’t met him at that party before the start of school, before meeting all her other friends, maybe then she wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybe if she had done a better job of keeping her distance. Maybe.

She thinks of Ingrid, then, like she does every time her heart feels extra treacherous. What is she up to? Is she taking her nap? Is she taking comfort in the faithfulness of her friends? Eva trembles, shame scolding the walls of her stomach like vomit, hot and acid, threatening to spill. Her hands are still bare from before, and she’s starting to lose sensibility there due to the cold, but she doesn’t put her gloves back on, the pain in her hands keeping her mind away from the raw wreckage in her chest.

She closes her eyes briefly to take a deep breath and get rid of the burning tears that had nestled behind them. When she opens them, Jonas is standing in front of her. His friends must have left while Eva was absorbed in her thoughts and now they’re alone in the park expect for a couple of young kids on the far side.

“Come here,” he breathes, “I wanna teach you.”

For a second, she doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, but she gets up all the same, ready to follow him to the Moon, if he’d ask. A moment later she connects the dots and walks towards him hesitantly, not sure she’s up for a skateboard session, but craving to be nearer.

“Who says I wanna learn?” she rebuts with a defiance she’s definitely not feeling. Not because she doesn’t want to learn but more because saying it makes her feel as though she’s not losing the last shred of control over herself that she is desperately holding onto.

He doesn’t meet her fiery reply. Instead, he bows his head, nearly in apology, and gives her a look so tender she feels like crying, like he knows her and would never assume, like he understands. The frustration of not being able to touch him is making her want to chop her hands off.

“Will you let me try, though?”

She takes a step closer and now she is in his personal space. They’re not touching at all but she’s aware of his warm body a breath away from hers as if he was lying on top of her. She can smell his perfume now, and though it’s not the first time, by the way her body is reacting you wouldn’t tell. She knows she’d better step away, that when they’re this close, she loses all ability to think clearly and even getting her breath out of her lungs becomes a struggle.

She stays rooted to the spot. Then she nods her consent.

The smile he gives her is shy but brilliant, and she smiles in return, her heart in her throat, her eyes translucent.

She gets on the skateboard and wobbles a little. He reflexively grabs her hand to steady her and the touch is almost painful, her fingers icy and his warm and soft from the protection of his jacket. She realises this is the first time that Eva Mohn is holding Jonas Vasquez’s hand and she feels a mix of desperation and elatedness that threatens to make her laugh.

As he gingerly guides her around, she wonders how something so beautiful could have been born from such a wrong situation.

 

\--- 

 

She hangs up the phone, shoves it away from her and throws herself against the pillow at the head of the bed to stifle the frustrated scream about to come out. It’s 8 p.m.

She gives herself one whole minute to clear her mind, don’t think about it, _compartmentalise_ , then she refocuses her attention on the quiz show she stopped on earlier, when she couldn’t find anything even remotely interesting to watch. So far, she’s got most of her answers wrong. Which, constitutes no surprise at all.

Her friends are having a party at Sara’s place tonight. Nothing elaborate, Sara said, but there’ll be booze and nachos and _you can’t miss it, Eva, feels like I haven’t seen you in ages._ Eva protested, said she was feeling under the weather and that her mum was home and she wanted to spend time with her (which is a lie, but Eva figures it’s nothing compared to the way she has been untrue in the last months).

Being around Ingrid has become unbearable. Eva doesn’t truly understand how she went from being able to smoothly lie to Ingrid’s face every day while putting nail varnish on her fingers, to barely standing her friend’s presence in the same room.

She guesses that it’s her guilt, piled up in her guts and pressing against her chest as time went by, a weight demanding to be shed, like the skin off a snake.

She wants to scream she hasn’t _done_ anything wrong. Has hardly touched Jonas in the months she’s known him. She doesn’t even dare look his way when they are together, in fear her friends will read the way she feels on her face, plain as day.

It’s her heart, though, beating wildly to the rhythm of a feeling she cannot afford to feel. Her mind, deceiving her with hopeless dreams of being able to hold Jonas’s hand in the school yard. The heat between her legs, when late at night she can’t fall asleep and has no choice but to face the indelible mental image of his red lips in her brain.

Some days, she valiantly fights the urge to laugh in Ingrid’s face, how _fucking stupid_ she is, how oblivious she can be to ignore what’s so plain in front of her. Those are usually the days where Eva needs long showers before going to bed, needing to scrub her skin raw, to remove all the dirt she feels on herself, until the foggy mirror gives her a distorted enough reflection of herself that she doesn’t necessarily recognize the girl staring back at her.

She wonders if Jonas is at the party tonight. She can’t see him again, not so soon after this afternoon, and _his hands on her hips and breath on the back of her neck_ , and the way they shared a packet of Ringos afterwards and started talking sat on a bench, as if there weren’t enough words and no word was enough. Sara mentioned how down Ingrid’s feeling, that she and Jonas had a pretty nasty row just this morning. She figures the chances of him being there are very slim. And now she needs to go, she muses, to prove to herself that his presence is not the incentive to move from her bed her conscience might think it is.

She glances at the tv screen once again, out of reflex. The contestant is a young girl, red hair, not much older than her. The presenter asks, “Who’s second in line to the Norwegian throne?”

“Prince Sverre Magnus,” Eva answers out loud to the screen. She gets up from the bed and goes to her wardrobe. She grabs a tiny blue and yellow dress, one Ingrid passed on to her, because _Jonas doesn’t like it much_. She puts it on quickly and adjusts the fabric around her hips, so that it’s comfortable on her.

She will put on the best makeup she can and will look beautiful, she promises herself, stunning even. Then she’ll go to the fucking party and have fucking fun.

“It’s Princess Ingrid Alexandra,” says the girl on tv and the answer is correct.

Of course, it is, Eva thinks. Of course, it is.

 

\---

 

When she arrives at Sara’s house she passes through her backyard absentmindedly and gets a glimpse of what’s going on inside through the giant living room window. It’s 9:45 p.m.

The lights are dimmed but she can clearly see Ingrid, sitting in a corner, a group of girls from her class around her, a random hand on her shoulder. Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes are slightly wild, clear signs that she’s just been in a fight.

That panics Eva, for it means that Jonas is likely here and she hadn’t counted on that. She doesn’t want to be around Ingrid when she’s upset, doesn’t want the responsibility to console her friend to fall to her. Eva leans against the side of the house, and extracts the tiny bottle of vodka that she brought to the party, gulping a generous mouthful. She instantly feels better, less worried, warmer, less dangerous.

She gets to the front door and enters the house. The temperature shift is immediate and makes her face hot in an instant. She means to join Ingrid and Sara and the girls, but is side-tracked by the shape of a guy that she doesn’t immediately recognise.

“Halla, babe,” he greets cheerfully, and Eva winces.

Right. Fucking Frederick. The guy she hooked up with the previous weekend. He’s tall and moderately attractive, Eva thinks, at least attractive enough for a no-pressure shag, but if she had known he’d be so insistent on later contact she would have steered clear.

As it is, she doesn’t really know how to stop his blabbering without appearing rude and she is partially happy to put off the less entertaining parts of her evening, so she indulges him in idle small talk.

It’s just seconds into the conversation that she feels eyes on her and turns her head slightly to find Jonas by the fireplace, a can of beer in his hand, ball cap covering his curls. They stare at each other for a second, then she gets back to the conversation but never stops feeling his gaze on her afterwards. She grits her teeth in frustration, willing him to look away, to exit the room, to leave the party. He can’t be far enough away.

When she manages to get free from Fred, Ingrid is no longer in the living room. Eva intends to look for her in her room, but she doesn’t have to go as far as that, Ingrid is just in the hallway off the sitting room. When she sees Eva, she gives her a tight smile and approaches.

“Hei,” she says, and her voice is steady, but her eyes are tired. “Thank god you came.”

Eva doesn’t register she is moving until she finds her arms around Ingrid’s shoulders, her hands pressing against her shoulder blades, her nose in her hair, inhaling the camomile shampoo Eva gave her as a present for her last birthday. Her eyes fill with tears, bitter and stinging and _fucking unfair_ , and she prolongs the hug for a moment longer, to get a grip on herself.

Ingrid doesn’t mind, evidently, her breath coming out shaky. Eva pats her frizzy hair gently, the fist around her heart tightening at the sight of her friend so distressed.

She is hit with the memory of the two of them hugging in a different room and a different time, of Ingrid being the one to console her after a particularly nasty incident with one of the school’s popular girls. She remembers how comforting their hug was back then, and knows Ingrid can find the same kind of solace now, can feel the same kind of affection from her.

Eva cares so much, is the thing, loves Ingrid so dearly. She has the presumption to consider herself Ingrid’s best friend, the one who understands her best, who can see her most clearly. She is tormented by the shame of her illicit heart, yet, she finds herself resenting Ingrid for not being her best of friends in return, for not knowing her heart the way Eva knows hers.

_I am falling apart too, why can’t you see that?_

Eventually they draw apart and Ingrid sniffles unattractively.

“I wanted to get my mind off things tonight, but no, he had to have his argument, the dickhead,” she explains, her rage making her eyes shine darkly, the music in the background distorting her voice eerily. “I swear to god, he looks for a fight every chance he gets, and I know he doesn’t care about us anymore, I… I fucking hate him.”

“That’s not true,” Eva replies in a whisper, and knows she is going to hell for this, if for nothing else.

Ingrid shakes her head, as if to dismiss what Eva’s just said. “I’m going home, can’t stand to be here. Never even like Sara’s house in the first place.” She looks around as if the walls had just verbally offended her.

“Come to mine for breakfast tomorrow, I want some Eva time,” Ingrid says, before she stamps a quick kiss on her cheek, “I want details on Fred.” This kind of attention would have given her so much pleasure a year ago, Eva knows, now she wants to vomit.

Ingrid squeezes her hand, grabs a coat from the floor and is out of the hallway in seconds.

Eva stands there for a while, thinking a thousand things at once, trying to calm her nerves, and breathe deep breaths. _You did good_ , she tells herself, _you gave nothing away_.

She decides she wants to dance, there and then. The music is pretty catchy, and she thinks she will look good moving to the beat in the dress she’s wearing. She goes through a door on her right, thinking it will lead to the main area, but finds herself in the kitchen.

The table is littered with chips and red plastic cups and the floor shows the signs of people trudging on from outside.

She goes to open the fridge, not sure exactly what she’s looking for. When his voice reaches her, she turns around abruptly and doesn’t close the fridge door.

“Hey,” Jonas says, and he doesn’t look as chill as his usual self. He scratches the back of his head, and looks to the floor after throwing her a look. His gaze lingers on his feet and she curses herself for wearing a dress she knows he doesn’t like, burning with the rotten desire to have his eyes on her now. On her face, on her breasts, on her legs, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s on her.

She is caught off guard and should wait before speaking. She doesn’t.

“Ingrid left,” is what she says, as if having news of Ingrid were the only possible reason why he would engage in a conversation with her. She knows this will rile him up immediately.

“’s not why I’m here,” his voice is gruff with barely concealed exasperation, “not to talk to her, and definitely not to talk to Frederick.”

She wants to punch him in the face at that, wants to cause him physical pain. She wants to tell him he has no right to be angry about that, that she will shag the whole of Oslo if it pleases her. She is not his.

_I am not yours_. “Fuck you,” she says instead.

Jonas deflates quickly after that, like a balloon the morning after the party. He fixes his eyes on hers, and doesn’t remove his gaze. His silence is meant as an apology he is too coward to voice.

She feels cold at the scrutiny, grabs the nearest bottle on the counter and downs half the liquid, hoping it’s alcoholic enough to smooth the edges of her temper.

He is still looking at her when she puts the bottle down. He looks handsome in the refrigerator light, lean and solid and so sick with love it scares her. She feels unsteady under his gaze, like she could say terrible things, like she could do things she wouldn’t be able to go back from.

She clears her throat to clear her mind. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she says after a while, and it’s meant as a jab, like _I don’t want you here_ and _go away_.

He doesn’t take her bait this time though, and replies, “You did? I knew you’d come,” and he takes a step towards her, his expression set in desperate determination that has her legs shake so much she has to grip the granite counter to steady herself.

She is panicking now. “Jonas… don’t come closer… please.” She knows if she doesn’t school her face tightly enough she will start crying soon.

He listens and stops, looking pained and helpless. “Eva, please…”

She shakes her head furiously, gets locks of her hair in her face, has trouble drawing breath. “Why won’t you stay away,” she whispers, broken, “I’m a liar and a cheater and- “

Jonas moves in a heartbeat, is in front of her now, not touching but so close she could be in his arms in exactly one second. “I am too. Please, Eva, let me… you must know I- “

“No,” she interrupts, before he can say anything dangerous. He doesn’t look like he will stop, and she is scared she is going to place her hand on his chest in a second and _compromise herself_ and-

A voice reaches them from the doorway, shattering their bubble like a bullet would a window pane.

“Hey bro,” comes Isak’s greeting. “We’re heading back.”

Jonas moves away, tags at the hem of his shirt uncomfortably. Eva brings her hair behind her ears with trembling hands, worried Isak got the right impression from their stances. She quickly realises Jonas’ friend is intoxicated enough to forget just enough of the evening’s contents come tomorrow morning to exonerate them. Thank god for small mercies.

Jonas clears his throat, “Yeah, let’s go.”

In a second he is at the doorway by Isak’s side and out of the room without a glance back. Eva is more hurt by his ignoring her now than by all the words just exchanged.

“Bye Eva,” comes Isak’s voice, but Eva is too far away to reply.

She closes her eyes and shudders. She wants him back in the kitchen with her, shouting at her, wants to have another chance to get on his nerves, to make his blood boil. She wants to never see him again, to have him every day for the rest of her life.

She draws her hand across her lips violently, smudging her red lipstick across her cheek.

She feels it deep in her bones that next time she will not be able to hold herself back. That she will cross the line.

She turns around and realises the fridge has been open all this time. She sighs, then closes it with a thud.

She must have spoiled the milk.


End file.
